Columnist: Obama Tour Hurt None Other than Obama

Probably the opposite of what the President wanted:

Nine months ago, Obama made an unplanned and involuntary trip to the political woodshed. All of us whose job is to defeat him in 2012 anxiously awaited his response and return.

Like a just-disciplined child, he at first recoiled at the punishment doled out by voters last November. He stomped his feet, threw a few tantrums, and demanded new toys, in the form of a clean debt limit increase. That reaction was to be expected — but not expected to be permanent.

But now that we have seen The Bus Tour, it's official: This president did not learn his lesson at the woodshed, and that's going to make the job of Republican campaigners a lot easier in 2012.

Some will say I'm over-reading a single three-day grind through the Midwest on a couple of carbon-devouring, armored people-movers. But I believe this trip means what every other bus tour through the heartland by a national Democratic figure meant.

Bill Clinton did it.

Al Gore did it.

John Kerry did it.

Bus tours through cornfields with plaid-clad stage props are the first order of protocol at the beginning of a Democrat's general election campaign.

The Washington punditocracy writes off the significance of bus tours like it writes off political conventions: too scripted, too prescribed, too dial-tested. There's an argument, however, that these moments foreshadow entire candidacies.

Precisely because they are planned and canned, dog-and-pony shows like Obama's in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois this week show us exactly the candidate he wants to be. For Republican strategists, that's a big relief.

On tour

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